Everything I write has a deep personal investment, even the book on stone I just finished. I think readers are going to be a little surprised – and, I predict, annoyed – that the book is so personal. It’s about deep time, geological force, the Anthropocene, fossils, medieval lapidaries, materialism, and Stonehenge. But it’s also about wandering the world, mostly with my family, and it’s about being Jewish, and a parent, and grieving for loss, and catastrophe. It’s a melancholy book, trying to stay hopeful but limned with despair.